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De Lift (1983)
De Lift (released in North America as The Lift) is a 1983 Dutch science-fiction horror film directed and written by Dick Maas about a mysteriously intelligent elevator that begins a killing spree to those who come near it. An American remake titled Down was released in 2001 and was also directed by Dick Maas. Plot In a building in Amsterdam, a lift inexplicably begins to function alone. after a lightning storm causes a power failure and traps four people in the elevator. The lift will not open after even after a subsequent power restore and the passengers almost suffocate. Soon subsequent malfunctions prove fatal as an elderly blind man falls to his death when the elevator doors open to an empty shaft, while the building night watchman is decapitated by the elevator doors and a janitor is snared in the shaft in which his body drops through the elevator ceiling hatch. Felix Adelaar, a technician from the elevator company Deta Liften, begins to examine the elevator in an attempt to find any anomalies. During the course of several inspections, he meets Mieke De Boer, a journalist for The Nieuwe Revu, a local tabloid. When inspections reveal no apparent problems with the lift, Felix becomes obsessed with the continuing malfunctions of the lift. When Felix pays yet another visit to the building, he notices outside a van for Rising Sun, a manufacturer of microprocessors for automation and a secret supplier of experimental microprocessors to Deta Liften. Felix and Mieke, after collection newspaper article archives about Rising Sun, try to meet up with the company's CEO, but the CEO begins to act nervously. Mieke invites Felix to meet up with her former university professor, who specializes in electronics. The professor explains microprocessors sensitivity to external factors, such as electric fields, magnetic fields, and radioactivity, which undermine the proper functionality and tells about a biocomputer built years ago which had suddenly begun to self-program and went out of control. The next morning Felix is summoned to the lift factory by his boss, who angrily suspends him for his unauthorized visit to Rising Sun. Felix realises the truth. It turns out the lift's controller, made out of organic material, is going rogue by killing people in which makes them nervous. Resolved to solve the lift conspiracy, Felix returns to the building to deal with it and a battle ensues between the controller and him. He manages to harm it, but finally, the controller destroys the cables in the hopes of killing him by launching the lift to the ground. Mieke, in the meantime has joined him and saves him in the last minute. As Rising Sun's CEO arrives to see that his experiment failed, he pulls out a gun and fires into the biocomputer to seemingly kill it. The computer then shoots one of the broken cables out to drag him inside the shaft and hangs him. As a shaken Felix and Mieke walk down the stairs, the credits roll. It is unclear, if the computer is dead. Cast * Huub Stapel: Felix Adelaar * Willeke van Ammelrooy: Mieke de Beer * Josine van Dalsum: Saskia Adelaar Category:Science fiction horror films Category:Films of the 1980s Category:1983 films Category:Dutch films